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THERE is the uncanny resemblance between Mrs Kiran Bedi and Sachin Tendulkar, sans the latter’s backache. Both can stand up to a challenge and a test all on their own, batting, bowling, fielding, inspiring their colleagues and, above all, ensuring audience participation. If Sachin is the world’s number one batsman, Mrs Kiran Bedi has many more distinctions and laurels to her credit, and the best is yet to come for her.

It is her amazing capacity to remain unfazed by achievements and setbacks alike only to adjust to task dimensions in hand which reminds me of poet Bahadur Shah Zafar’s couplet, “Zafar use aadmi na janeyaga/Jo ho kaisa he saheb-e-fahm-wo-zaka/Jise aish mein yaad-e-khuda na raha/Jise taish mein khauf-e-khuda na raha (He is no humanbeing how so ever knowledgeably intelligent who forgets his creator when in plenty and does not fear him in angst).

She did more for Chandigarh in 40 days than was possible in years. And returning to her post as Joint Commissioner, Police Training College (on the way to becoming an academy), she has chalked out a training programme deploying state-of-the-art fire arms training system to sharpen the reflexes under simulated trying ground situations.

But she risks losing her constituency for India, because the smart policemen/policewomen from her academy will, sooner than later, migrate to the U.N. Services; Americas; the European Union etc, where Indians are in great demand.

However, there is one assignment which will not desert for long. It is that of Director-General of Family Welfare, beginning with Delhi and NCT, to cover the whole of India. After the Emergency mishap, election-prone politicians and parties keep off family planning. Even the nomenclatures have been changed to Family Welfare, Empowerment of Women.

However, Nature is taking its toll in accord with the Malthusian perception. By October, 1999, world population would have gone up to 6 billion of which one-sixth, just a wee bit short of a billion, shall be in India. The average population growth has come down to 1.8 per cent, but there is the case for further reduction if it is to be correlated to education, health and useful engagement. Who could do this better than the dedicated problem-shooter in Mrs Kiran Bedi?

Farmers’ woes

THE Tribune of September 17 carried a photograph of a farmer on the front page who was conveying his happiness to his son over the cellular phone after getting seeds from the Kisan Mela at Ludhiana. The picture was, of course, a sign of prosperity among farmers in Punjab.

But quite often a case of suicide by a farmer is blown out of proportion by the Press. Many stories are then “coined” to show the “pathetic condition” of the farmers in the state. I am pained to point out that no effort is made by the Press to investigate the cause(s) of suicide by farmers.

Many farmers who have no viable land holdings take heavy loans from banks. Such loans are never returned in time. Then such farmers do not lag behind in spending lavishly on marriages and other social functions. The result is that they are caught in a debt trap.

Finding it difficult to come out of the quagmire of financial difficulties, they commit suicide. If, in spite of the so many concessions by the pro-farmer government and a substantial increase in the prices of their produce, they commit suicide, then the fault lies with them. The Press should play an impartial role and bring to light the real causes of such suicide cases.

LAKHA SINGH
Sarhali (Amritsar)

	M A I L B A G	Tuesday, September 28, 1999
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